Brave enough to lie

This morning the Yale Daily News runs a letter to the editor from the president of the Yale College Students for Democracy, defending the organization against Jim Sleeper’s calumny in Sleeper’s Monday column. Sleeper has managed to get the paper to run his self-congratulatory non-response to the letter together with it: “In defense of the Yale College Students for Democracy.” Sleeper must have instructed the YDN that civility requires he be provided another opportunity to defame the students he burnt in his column if they are going to be allowed to set the record straight.
In his non-response response, Sleeper not only reiterates his original falsehoods, he calls on “progressive and conservative activists to clean their houses. They’ll have to, if the rest of us are brave enough to make it clear that we’re not buying what’s pernicious or nonsensical in their claims and that we won’t be intimidated or guilt-tripped into pretending otherwise.” Let us add to the list of Sleeper’s lies the pretense that his words demonstrate bravery.